KITES. 123 



but as for courage, it must take its place among the " passive 

 stout," that display their prowess more by suffering than by 

 doing. 



A country in what may be called a half-cultivated state, 

 where the fields alternate with naked and cold wastes, and 

 the portions out of crop are covered with scanty natural 

 grasses, or in that state of slovenly and unprofitable fallow 

 which rivals the intended pastures in verdure where rag- 

 weed and mountain-daisies form tufts, equally forbidding to 

 the nose and the palate of the cattle, though these have been 

 so anatomised by storms and starvation that every bone in 

 them may be counted, and the crow and the less frequent 

 raven come hopping about as if they already scented carrion, 

 these are the places for the kite. If there are woods in the 

 vicinity, kites will nestle there ; and if there are not, they 

 will come from a considerable distance to the pasture. Kites 

 used to be exceedingly numerous in those inland parts of 

 Angus, Kincardine, and Aberdeen, where the land is cold and 

 bare, and the cottages were arranged along the sides of the 

 moors, the owners paying so many pullets as parts of their 

 rent. The pullets, with their broods, roamed freely over the 

 cultivated patch of land, where the crop never entirely con- 

 cealed the clods ; and the kite was so common a visitor that 

 some of the children were generally posted on the watch to 

 " sheu the glead," sometimes armed with a watchman's rattle 

 to assist them in their vocation j and when by any chance the 

 marauder was caught, he was forthwith nailed upon the most 

 conspicuous part of the hut, in terrorem of all forky-tailed 

 hawks that might in future have the lawless audacity to dimi- 

 nish the sacred and rigidly demanded tale of " the laird's kain 

 hens;" and many times has the dame " o' gentil bluid" prayed 

 inward maledictions upon the kite, as she sat tugging and 

 planting tooth-ache in both jaws, over the matron pullet of 

 twenty broods, which, in consequence of the alleged havoc of 



